At long last we are ready to put the 2012-’13 season into the books. But before we do, we’ll be Throwin’ Elbows one last time:

IN DEFENSE OF TRACY MCGRADY

Tracy McGrady spent 15 years in the NBA, made seven All-Star teams and seven All-NBA teams, led the league in scoring twice and scored 18,381 career points. Despite all of that, McGrady remains a paradigm of wasted potential, summed up best by his former coach, Jeff Van Gundy, who was told it takes 10,000 hours of practice for a good player to become truly elite.

“Tracy McGrady was 1,000 hours of practice,” Van Gundy said. “He should be a Hall of Fame player. His talent was other-worldly. He was given a great leg up in the race against other players. He’s as close as I’ve ever seen to someone with a perfect body and a good mind.”

McGrady has acknowledged that, yes, perhaps the game was too easy for him, and that he was not a great practice player because of it. At age 33, he obviously can’t get the opportunity to become a practice warrior back—he was out of the league this year, playing in China, before the Spurs signed him yesterday.

That, at least, gives McGrady some opportunity to change one of the biggest of the many disappointments of his career: In eight NBA playoff appearances McGrady has never once advanced past the first round. Now, playing for the second-seeded Spurs, he is almost assured of suiting up for the second round of this postseason for the first time.

Personally, I would find some justice in that. McGrady has taken too much flak over the course of his career, and Van Gundy’s memorable quote provided the punctuation on McGrady’s reputation. We’d all like to have all of our NBA players—or athlete in general—obsessed with maximizing performance, the way Michael Jordan was or Kobe Bryant is now. Not everyone is wired that way, though. McGrady averaged 32.1 points per game when he was 23 years old, and if that many points come that easy when you’re that age, you might be inclined to think you don’t need to practice so hard.

In summing up McGrady’s career, it is easy to overlook the countless injuries he dealt with, to his back especially, but also to his knee and shoulder, and it’s just as easy to circle back and blame those injuries on McGrady’s casual practice approach. But there’s no evidence his back was injured because he didn’t do enough sit-ups or medicine-ball work.

And it’s also easy to put the lack of a second-round berth on McGrady’s shoulders. But that’s not fair, either. It’s not as though McGrady was a playoff choke artist. In all the series he lost, his team was considered the underdog. Maybe his teams never lived up to their potential but, remember, the two guys he was supposed to star alongside during his career—Grant Hill and Yao Ming—were even more injury-wracked than McGrady.

In San Antonio, McGrady won’t be asked to play much. But it is likely he will get some floor time, and don’t be surprised if he puts forth some good performances when given the chance. He won’t erase the legacy that is already cemented in the minds of most NBA observers, but he will, at least prove worthy of playoff advancement.

CURRY STAYS HOT

So, it turns out that Monta Ellis was right—he and Stephen Curry can’t play together. That was Ellis’ assessment back at the opening of training camp in 2009, and prophetically enough, Ellis was dealt away from the Warriors last March.

While Ellis’ Bucks are slumping into the end of the year, still in the postseason only because the rest of the East is so weak, Curry has emerged as a star in Golden State, leading the Warriors into the mush tougher West playoffs. Curry finished the regular season averaging 22.9 points on 45.1 percent shooting, knocking down an amazing 45.3 percent of his 3s. He made 272 3-pointers on the season, surpassing Ray Allen’s season record of 269 makes.

Warriors coach Mark Jackson was spot on when he said, “I don’t know who second place is for the best shooter in the world, but he certainly has first place tied up.”

Golden State now has second-year man Klay Thompson next to Curry, and Thompson is a sharpshooter himself, a much better fit than Ellis ever was. For his part, Ellis has struggled to make things work playing with Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings, which leads to the obvious conclusion that it is Ellis who has trouble working with other guards—which, maybe, is what he meant when he declared a backcourt with he and Curry would fail.

RIP SCORING RACE

The Thunder weren’t going to play forward Kevin Durant in the season finale. The Knicks decided to let Carmelo Anthony sit. That brought the year’s battle for the scoring championship to an ignominious end, with Durant basically conceding the title to Anthony. That’s basically what Kobe Bryant did last year, when he sat out rather than try to pass Durant.

Once upon a time, scoring titles were meaningful. Back in 1978, David Thompson and George Gervin went head-to-head for the scoring championship, and in the final game of the season, Thompson scored 73 points to take the lead. Gervin, though, countered with 63 points, enough to retake the lead and be crowned scoring king.